Monday, August 22, 2011

Games in Review, August 22nd, 2011 (Hoo Boy)

Since the last time I checked in, I got to play in one game, and run another (after a fashion). So let's see what I was up to last week . . .

I started playing in a War of the Dead game this past Wednesday. I needed to get back into my "player groove" as well as running games, and I figured, why not pretend to run from flesh eating zombies? So I made up my character and set out to help the last vestiges of uninfected humanity survive.

I made up my character fully intending him to more or less be an everyman character. The character type is certainly a trope of the genre. My character was a mechanic in his 60s who was a Vietnam vet, justifying a few d4 skills in some things that might not otherwise make sense, but without making him seem like anything other than just a guy that was in the wrong place at the wrong time.

As it turns out, a zombie apocalypse is really a proving ground for survival of the fittest. Except for that damn kid and all of his bennies. Do I need to point out that my poor guy got bit? And by a zombie baby, no less. We ended up fighting a zombie baby inside a church while one of us was outside challenging a biker leader to a duel, one on one.

Also, crossbows aren't nearly as good against zombies as they are against vampires. Especially not against zombie babies. By the end of the night, our body building nun was dead, as was our mystery man that carries a flashlight in his empty eye socket, and my old mechanic has been bitten and has about two and a half weeks before the infection runs its course.

So I'm thinking next time I'm making a former mafia hit man. That's real good at shooting. I'm sure someone like that would have survived for a while in a zombie apocalypse, right?

Now, about my Hellfrost game.

I'm not even sure I can encapsulate the experience. One of my players, Loquacious, has posted her view of what happened in the session here:

Long story short, while it's hard to describe in words, I've never quite had that kind of impasse with a player before, and it really threw me off my game. Then, as things started rolling again, I had some personal family issues come up.

I called the game at about 8:30, with the new party just about to set sail with the remains of one of the old party members, on the way to inter him at a site holy to his god. Best part of the night was the player, whose character was made without knowledge of the details of the trip, that has a phobia of water. When the mean, spiteful party member started teasing him about the sea voyage, he asked to ride on a separate ship from the rest of the party. It was great.

So the campaign reboot doesn't quite have the boots laced up yet. More on that later.